


Blood

by quicksparrows



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 17:35:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13058826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: A few little meetings, bloody and red.





	Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for hunter-gatherer diets.

.

 

 

> **I.**

"My partner and I used to fuck on this hill after clearing out the scum," Nil tells her, as coyly as ever. His eyes drift across her face, and she finds herself counting the little round tattoos under his eyes for the hundredth time.

"I'd believe it," she says.

"I always found it kept the flow going."

"I'd believe that, too," she says.

Nil chuckles.

Aloy has been propositioned before; she'd never known how to to play at hard-to-get or blushing. Those slick-mouthed men and suave women along the way had always been charmed by her ability to slide by them. It's not that she hadn't wanted to or hadn't been curious –– she'd just never had interest in being hunted.

“You don’t seem to like me much,” he says. Teasing, but not without point.

“I think we just take a different approach to things.”

“Tell me, then.”

“For you I know it’s the thrill of the kill... your blood is pumping and I suppose you want to keep it that way.”

“I do.”

“For me... I grew up alone. I never knew anyone who wanted to... know me in that way."

"To _know_ you," Nil repeats, slyly.

She watches him lounge out in the grass, sprawled as though he were on one of those nice raised Carja couches with the stuffing softer than fresh snow. She wonders if he feels the scratch of the sun-scorched scutchgrass on his bare lower back, or if he does, if he likes it.

"Maybe next time," she says.

He doesn't open his eyes, but a rare smile ghosts over his mouth. She glances at the considerable tent in his pants, the red silks rising high enough to brush the white metal plates on his belt.

"Next time," he repeats.

 

 

 

> **II.**

_Next time_ rings in her ears when she approaches the bandit camp, his footsteps soft behind her. It leaves her mind entirely when she's notching arrows to her bow and burying them deep into unwitting skulls. By time she's finished, her heart pounding and blood on her knees and a split lip where she'd knocked against an armored shoulder, she nearly puts the pointed end of her spear into Nil's gut, too.

"I startled you!" he says, withdrawing the offending hand from the shoulder. "You really lose yourself, don't you? You feel it pounding in your veins, so loud your ears hear nothing."

"I thought I'd missed one," she says. "Be careful, Nil."

She lowers her spear, but his hand is wrapped around the base of the point, so firm she isn't sure she can tug it away. The blade tip lingers near his exposed belly.

"What would you have done?"

He smiles. She wonders if he'd have liked getting reamed, delighted to see her lose control. Then again, maybe he prefers her precision; the blade inches from his bare belly, a mere reflex away from splitting him to his sternum. _Human guts aren't anchored together with machine parts,_ he'd said once, when they'd met to annihilate a camp down South. She'd understood, even if she hadn't let her mind linger on it.

"Let go," she says, and he does long enough for her to stick her spear in the ground. 

"Would you really have stuck me?" he asks. And then he drags the back of his finger up her bare forearm, from elbow to the space just under her sleeve hem. Effortless. Thoughtless.

"No," she says, but she isn't sure. Maybe she would. Maybe she wouldn't.

He's a puzzle that even All-Mother has yet to solve.

 

 

 

> **III.**

The next time they meet is in the desert, his territory. The arid lands are flat, split only by great rocky crevasses that provide shelter from the winds. They make quick work of the bandits holed up in the crags, aim true even through the dust. After he's had his fill of corpses and she has the thought of safe passage for outlanders, they sit in the empty camp to eat a freshly caught rabbit. 

In perhaps the most domestic thing they'll ever do, they agree to split the chyme. Aloy and Nil pick through the rabbit stomach together, picking through the hot ruminated clover and wildflowers, savoring each bite and saying little. Afterwards, Nil picks out the gallbladder; it looks like a shiny blue bead against the dark red liver, and it bursts like a berry between his fingers.

"We Carja," he says, "we have a delicacy."

She watches him dribble its bile over the liver.

"The Nora just cook it all inside the belly," she says. He cuts off a chunk of liver, and offers it to her red and bloody between his fingers. She pops it in her mouth; it is salty, saltier than the gelatinous texture would normally have. It's good. She licks her fingers, popping them between her lips one by one. "If you roast it on its back, it all churns in the body, and you can drink the broth it makes..."

Nil chuckles. He licks his lips.

"We'll cook it your way next time," he says.

"That'd take a while."

"I'm sure we could find something to do to pass the time," he says.

He reaches out, and she feels very much like a cornered rabbit when his bloodied hand strays near her face. For a split second, her heart feels fit to burst, and then it relaxes when he takes a lock of her hair between his fingers. There's relief, and then something like chagrin.

She makes a bit of a face at him, lips pursed.

"What are you doing?"

He rolls the hair between his fingertips, caressing.

"Not often you see hair like this."

“I know what you’re going to say,” she says.

“Do you really?” He purrs it, and he's close enough she swears she feels it through him, but that might just be the Focus making her senses twitch. His eyes drift across her face. “Go ahead and read my mind, then.”

“It’s the color of blood,” she says. “Red.”

The lock of her hair slips between his fingers. It occurs to her that’s the first time he’s touched her out of the heat of battle — these Carja, passionate but aloof. He laughs, smooth and slick. It drenches her.

“You make me sound so predictable,” he chuckles.

He leans back against the stone and she leans with him.

"That's because you _are_ predictable," she says, weight on the hand by his hip.

And that's when he catches her bloody mouth with his, and she dares decide to like it.


End file.
